星期一关门

Because I live in China, I’m used to feeling like I don’t know anything.  Not much in my 23 years of life before China happened to me has prepared me for this grand adventure.  However, it was revealed to me just how comfortable I’ve gotten in this land I once thought was so strange, as soon as I ventured out on a new quest.  Suddenly China seemed achingly familiar and understandable.  In India, and often in China, I’m humbled by my own ignorance of the world around me.  I’m desperately trying to eliminate the gaps in my knowledge but it seems that the more we learn, the more we realize how little we know.

I used to be on the swim team in high school but lest you start to get impressed let me admit that I was the slowest person on the team.  Actually I was the slowest person to ever grace the waters of the University pool.  Every day was the same.  I’d dive in and the water never failed to take my breath away.  The shock made me feel like I’d never truly been alive until that moment.  Of course it didn’t help when my sister stood on the edge and threw ice cubes at me.  I would resurface, breathless and shivering.  But after swimming for a few minutes I adjusted to the temperature and the water felt so good I never wanted to leave.  In a way, India had the same effect on me.

Our university in China has a medical program populated with students from India and Nepal who spend 4 ½ years here before returning home to do their internships, and last year I became close friends with a few of the students from India who met with us every Sunday for fellowship.  They graduated at the end of my first year in China, and are now back in India so I was looking forward to seeing them again.  Being foreigners together in China gave us a close bond and I miss them daily.  One of my friends lives in Mumbai and kindly invited us to stay at his house but due to my poor planning I hadn’t given him the flight number we were coming in on and was afraid he’d be unable to find us and go home.

We arrived in Mumbai in the middle of the night, utterly exhausted.  I was a little grouchy after missing our train on the way to Hong Kong and starting the trip stressed because the power had been out in our apartment, but thankful that we’d still made it on our flight with such small obstacles to overcome.  Because we hadn’t had power I hadn’t been able to check my email, so I wasn’t sure if my friend was going to be able to pick us up at the airport or not.  For the same reason, my cell phone had given up on me so I couldn’t look up his number to ask.  I was standing in line to go through customs just praying that he’d be there.  There’s something about airports that makes time drag on indefinitely, until you feel that real life is something going on outside and you’re not a part of it. 

We waited a profane amount of time for our backpacks to come off the airplane; that coupled with an already delayed midnight flight made it well on the way to 2am before we emerged from the Mumbai airport and looked around for a familiar face.  To my immense relief I saw my friend waving immediately and breathed out the tension I’d been holding in.  We got to his house at somewhere around 5am China time, which is what our body clocks thought it should be, and slept a painfully short amount of time before church the next morning.

Going to a large, organized church was one of the things I was looking forward to most about our trip.  It was wonderful to be surrounded by so many strong believers.   I closed my eyes and listened to the echo of Praise Him!  Praise Him!  Ever in joyful song fade away.  I thought about how beautiful and appropriate some of the old songs are.  After church we walked around town a little bit and went to the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival.

One thing I noticed above everything clamoring for my attention was beauty.  I was, and still am awestruck by the beauty that is everywhere present in India.  The people are beautiful, the clothes are beautiful, and the buildings are beautiful.  The arts festival was a concentration of color and creativity that impressed me immediately, but I found the same flair for art in every city we visited.

That night we also visited Chaupati Beach, where we looked curiously at the local fast food but were warned not to try it unless we wanted to be sick during our trip (a futile warning unfortunately).  The beach was swarming with people and life.  I tried to soak it all in, all the color and chaos, but instead it absorbed me.  I lost myself in watching the people around me until we walked down to Nariman point and breathed in the sea air.

The next day we planned to visit the Elephanta Caves, a fascinating collection of Hindu and Buddhist caves on Elephanta Island.  It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site, full rock carvings dedicated to the god Shiva among other things.  We sauntered down to the Gateway of India and were met by this sign:

“Every Monday Elephanta Caves are closed”

Apparently lots of things are closed on Mondays, like the Red Fort in Delhi, and the Indira Gandhi Museum.  If I had bought a Lonely Planet I might have found out about these little tips ahead of time, but that’s what happens when you are stingy.

We tossed around the idea of going to the Elephanta Caves the next time we were in Mumbai, at the end of our trip.  I really didn’t want to miss out on that experience.  But as the philosopher Jagger once said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

Since we’d already wandered around the arts festival, Marine Drive, and the Colaba Causeway we decided to take a local train.  That’s when I first encountered the poverty I knew was just beneath the surface of everything I’d seen so far.  Though the economic situation in other countries is similar, I got the feeling India is more open about their poor.  They didn’t try to hide them and pretend like problems didn’t exist.  I stood at the edge of the endless tangle of shacks and felt guilty for being there.  I thought about the money it took to take me there, and how absurd it was that I was born vastly richer than I deserve.  Even though I didn’t create any of the problems that afflict the people I saw, I couldn’t help feeling like the lowest person on the planet for just being there to witness it.  The money in my pockets seemed to accuse me just by existing.

If people remember the things that go wrong more than they remember the times when everything is great, then most of my last two years will be stuck in my mind forever.  And I think it’s true.  I think good days are synonymous with boring days.  So as I look back on the trouble we had in India, I realize that the trip is already growing in my mind, as one of those that I’ll be telling my grandchildren about and they won’t find it nearly as interesting as I do.

India is the only place I can remember being where I repeatedly proclaimed I love being a girl.  Everywhere we went they had security lines and there were separate lines for men and for women.  For some reason the ladies lines were a fraction of the length of the men’s and we breezed through security checkpoints.  They’ve also instituted “ladies only” trains in some places, which is a welcome break from unwelcome stares when traveling.

On our way back to my friend Sooraj’s house Jessica and I hopped on the ladies car while Sooraj ran down to the end after shouting instructions about when to get off.  The trains only stop for about 30 seconds, so it was easier for us to get on where we were.  We sat down and realized our car was much more comfortable than the ones we’d ridden on earlier.  There weren’t very many ladies and the seats were surprisingly cushioned.  That’s when I realized we’d accidentally gotten on the first class train.  In all the times we had ridden on a train before no one had asked us for our tickets, so I was trying to decide if it was worth getting off at the next stop and trying to make it on the economy class train before it took off again.  I decided I didn’t want to risk not making it back on the train, so we stayed where we were.  Unfortunately for us, a lady came around asking to see our tickets.  Not only did we not have first class tickets, but Sooraj had our tickets in his pocket.  We panicked as she lectured us about getting the right tickets, and we called Sooraj who got off at the next stop and met us and the angry railway employee instructing us on the importance of getting on the right car.  We meekly apologized and she graciously let us off with a lecture as our punishment rather than a fine.

Those first two days in India flew by, and we left for Rajasthan early the next morning.

It should be stated now that any attempt of mine to convey the richness, vibrancy, and chaos that is India will be sincerely inadequate.  I can share with you a glimpse here and there into my own experiences, but were you to go to the exact same places as me, and do the exact same activities as me you would come away with an entirely different experience.  The India you would discover would be very different than the India I explored.  They’d both be worthwhile.

 

''The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.''
- John F. Kennedy